Endowed in perpetuity by the Glenna Luschei Fund for Excellence

September 2016

3:33 Sports Short #47 // Sport? Living Sacrifice... by D. Thomas

Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Tue, 09/06/2016 - 12:11

Today's pair of Sports Shorts center on one of the most physically demanding endeavors of all: ballet. D. Thomas's piece below focuses on the physical and mental perfection that ballet demands of its practitioners, while Zoë McLaughlin's "After Ballet" contemplates what happens when you leave dancing behind.

Consider the power of the foot: pushing against the ground, elevating the heel, fourteen phlanges pressing up to pointes or propelling one hundred, two hundred pounds of flesh into flight—two feet, three feet; high jumpers might fly seven or eight feet up—. And landing: sink into the metatarsals, absorb the impact through the twenty-six foot bones, and plié when you land.

3:33 Sports Short #46 // After Work by Demetri Raftopoulos

Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Thu, 09/01/2016 - 12:33

This week's final Sports Short comes from Demetri Raftopoulos. It's about Greeks and Colombians finding shared community through soccer in Long Island. Hope you enjoy! And check back next week for more Sports Shorts.

I walked out of the catering hall holding a soccer ball. New Hyde Park Wildcat logos were printed around the white of the ball; the first team I had ever played for at five years old, when positions were irrelevant and every player attacked together. My coach in middle school called it herd-ball.

The other valets followed me to the parking lot, unbuttoning their white collared uniforms. Summer had yet to relinquish its hold on Long Island, now early in October. Waiters emerged from the back of the catering hall, as we appeared from the front, meeting in the middle of the long, wide, now empty, lot. They removed their black suit jackets and vests, fighting the unexpected humidity.

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